


a little gray area (where I can keep you safe)

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 20:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11563215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: Peter thinks he doesn’t need to be protected.(Some adults disagree.)





	a little gray area (where I can keep you safe)

**Author's Note:**

> Self-betaed. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome. 
> 
> This fic was written mostly on my urges to address 1. there's no way that NOBODY figured out Peter Parker's secret identity, given how he's the shittiest liar in Queens, 2. THE MILES MORALES REFERENCE 3. I can't believe Howling Commando Jim Morita's grandson is Peter's principal 4. he's fifteen!!!!!!!!!! I'm dying from how fifteen he is please protect him. so I conjured this fic to satisfy my protective urges 
> 
> Tony fails a lot but he's trying, okay?

1.

Aaron Davis doesn’t see the news until hours later, after his ice cream melted into goo and the webbing that trapped his hand finally dissolved enough for him to unstick himself from his car. He’s a little pissed about the ice cream and the boredom of standing around in the parking structure for so long, but he’s overall kinda warming up to the spider kid. It’s hard not to like someone who offered himself as target practice to save Aaron’s skin.

So he comes home and finally turns on the TV to see the ferry disaster rolling on the news, and he has to sit down on his ratty couch and stare at the screen for a while. The images of Staten Island Ferry sliced neatly into two is a bit…big. Aaron is no stranger to crime and the fallout, but. It’s a lot like that crazy could-shoot-someone-back-in-time weaponry. Aaron’s chill with knives and guns and the occasional stickup. This? This is way out of his league. This is a lot like aliens in Manhattan, except all the crooks here are human. And so is the one Queens hero fighting against them.

Aaron’s pretty fucking sure that the spider kid is like, _twelve_. Fuck, did he send a twelve-year-old into _that_?

It’s Queens. Aaron’s been stealing since he was ten years old and sneaking behind his drunk daddy’s back. He shouldn’t feel responsible for a dumbass kid who could probably whoop his ass with both hands tied behind his back. He shouldn’t feel worried.

But Aaron spends his Thursday nights hanging out with his only nephew, and Miles is a good kid. Miles thinks his uncle is the coolest guy in Queens right after Spiderman (of fucking course). If anybody comes within a five block radius of Miles with that nasty alien shit, Aaron is gonna knife them through the throat. 

That spider kid can keep Queens safe, though. Well. As safe as Queens can get. He better not die any time soon.

The next day, he gets a fifty buck gift card for Baskin Robbins and a note that says in printed ink, _Maybe don’t point the kid towards a crazy weapons dealer next time_. Aaron snorts and throws the card in the trash, but keeps the gift card. No idea if there’ll ever be a next time, but if there is? Aaron is gonna teach that kid how to be better at this shit.

2.

Marco Delmar is used to being dealt a rough hand in life. He lost his parents young and was shunted through the foster system for a long time, and in the middle of it he dropped out of high school and worked odd jobs that were sometimes hard and terrifying and humiliating. But he worked his way through it, and saved up slow and steady. He married a kind wife, had a beautiful daughter, and managed to open his own deli. He was even on the way to making a name as the best sandwich place in town.

And then his entire life was sliced through and set on fire with some superweapon by ATM robbers from across the street.

It’s not impossible to rebuild. Marco’s lived through worse, but his _family_. The deli is their main source of income, and while his wife is working as many shifts as she can at the hospital, there’s going to be so much time and money wasted on returning everything back to normal. 

The ATM robbers weren’t even on their side of the street, and yet it’s Marco’s life that’s been torn upside down.

It’s been two weeks since the deli was closed down and Marco is busy sorting through the bills when there’s a knock on the door. He opens it to a bland-faced man in an immaculate suit. 

“I’m from the Department of Damage Control,” the man says. Marco’s already been introduced to the suited snobs sniffing around the remains of his store. He’s never seen this man before. “Mr. Delmar, I have good news for you.”

The man produces an envelope that contains a printed letter and a cheque. The letter says that the DODC will be restoring his deli entirely free of cost within the month, and that he will be receiving a sizable sum to make up for the loss of business in the meantime. The cheque’s amount is more than what Marco can make in half a year. 

Marco didn’t know that the government was paying out civilian damages now.

Weeks later, the deli is reopened, and it’s actually nicer than before. Cleaner, definitely. Murph certainly is happy to be back, purring as he settles on a display case. Peter Parker is one of the first ones through the new door, eyes wide and happy as he greets Marco and Murph. He bounces on the balls of his feet as he orders a sandwich, and there’s something about the way he looks so relieved to see Marco back at the counter, something about the way he glances back at the newly renovated ATM machines across the street, that Marco instinctively shoves the sandwich towards the boy and says, “On the house.”

Later, Marco rereads the letter that came with the cheque and looks at the name signed at the bottom. He’s pretty sure that there’s no way a mere intern could have persuaded Tony Stark to help an old deli owner out. Right?

Well, he has enough money to give the kid the occasional free sandwich now.

3.

Jack Morita is not an idiot. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell. He’s the principal of a magnet high school for intelligent kids. He has to deal with smartass teenagers every day.

So of course the first thing he thinks when he sees a third of the school buses dented and destroyed in the school parking lot is _oh god, what has Peter Parker done?_

Thankfully, Peter is alive and not-murdered by whoever wrecked the school buses. Jack is tempted to ask the boy who the hell is responsible for upheaving the school budget like this, but he doesn’t. Acknowledging the whole secret superhero identity means Jack will be forever complicit in the kid’s shenanigans. Jack has a school to run; he doesn’t have time for that kind of shit.

So he’s in his office, groaning over the number of buses he’ll have to replace, when he receives word that the school is getting an anonymous donation that will cover the cost of all the buses. It’s probably enough to build them a whole new robotics lab as well. Two labs, even.

Jack processes the amount of money that the school suddenly has, pinches the bridge of his nose, and then calls Stark Industries. He tells the highest personnel he can reach that Principal Morita would like to speak to Mr. Stark about one of his interns. Mr. Stark should know which one. It’s about school buses.

Twenty minutes later, Tony Stark waltzes into Jack’s office.

“You know, I think you take after your grandfather. Just a smidge,” Stark snarks, settling into the chair opposite of Jack’s. His eyes are on the photo behind Jack’s chair. 

“You said that the last time we met,” Jack says, dry. They’ve met twice, both at social functions meant to honor the heroes who served with Captain America. Both times, Stark had looked pained to be there. Even now, Stark looks like he wants to leave. 

“Well, it’s been a while, and you certainly look even more like him now,” Stark says, face a perfect mask. His eyes flicker to Jack’s and he cuts through the bullshit. “How did you know it was me?”

“Really?” Jack asks. “Spiderman, who operates solely in Queens, and _only_ when it’s not during school hours, miraculously is in D.C. the one time my students are there and in danger? And somehow, Peter Parker is mysteriously missing for that whole catastrophe? And then the same Peter Parker ditches detention just before Spiderman shows up on the Staten Ferry? Isn’t it a grand coincidence that Peter Parker also happens to be interning for a billionaire superhero?”

Stark winces. “Right, yeah, good point.”

“He’s a sophomore,” Jack says. He’s a little upset that he has to be having this conversation with Tony Stark. Aliens in Manhattan are supposed to _stay_ in Manhattan. Jack doesn't want to be mixed up with superheroes; he wants to live a more or less normal life, teaching the younger generation and watching them grow. But now there’s a teenage superhero in detention and Jack doesn’t want to let him out and see him get killed. “He’s a kid.”

“I said the same thing to him,” Stark says. “He won’t stop. Seriously, you’re the one who’s a professional child-wrangler. Teach me how to make him listen to me or something. Are all teenagers so reckless?”

It occurs to Jack that Stark probably didn’t want to get mixed up with the younger generation or teenagers. He’s just as out of his comfort zone as Jack is, when it comes to Peter.

Jack didn’t want to follow his grandfather’s footsteps, but he’s proud of him. He’s proud of the Howling Commandos and Captain America. He doesn’t care that Steve Rogers is technically on the run right now; it hasn’t stopped him from keeping the Captain America PSA videos in school. Jack believes that all kids can be good, that people can all be heroes if they try, and that heroes are worth having faith in. He thinks Tony Stark just might be a guy trying to do the right thing, even if he’s absolutely shit at it. 

Jack didn’t want to follow his grandfather’s footsteps but he’ll do it all the same, if it means he can keep his student safe.

“Teenagers don’t listen to anybody,” Jack says. Stark laughs, sinking a little more comfortably into his seat. “The best we can do is try to give them safety gloves and clean up after them.” He considers the sizable donation his school just received. “You’ve gotten the second part down, I suppose.”

Stark shakes his head, looking amused and chagrined at the same time. “Well, looks like I better invent excellent safety gloves.”

Days later, Jack receives a secured email that contains a proposal full of new security features for the school, all to be provided discreetly and freely. Jack thinks he just might set Peter free from daily detention after all.

4\. 

Adrian Toomes spends a lot of time thinking, these days. There’s not much else to do in prison. He spends a lot of time after lights out laying in his bunk, looking up at the empty concrete ceiling, thinking about where it all went wrong, how he could have done better, why it all came down to this. The answer is the spider boy, pretty much every time.

Peter was the complicating factor, the one wrench thrown into the works, and now Adrian is here, alone in the dark, miles and miles away from the people he loves. 

He wonders if killing the kid that first night would have helped. Maybe the second time, in Maryland. Or even at the ferry. Maybe everything would’ve worked out if Adrian had been a little more ruthless. 

Or maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe someone else would have come hunting Adrian down instead. Maybe it would have all come out into the light eventually, and his baby girl would have seen the murderer who killed the boy she cared so much about instead of her father. 

Adrian misses Liz. He misses her and Doris so much. He’d kill that kid in a heartbeat if he thought it would get him back to his family.

But killing the kid won’t help anything now. The cat’s out of the bag and Adrian has no more secrets to keep. 

Well, he has one secret: the kid’s name.

Adrian isn’t keeping it under wraps for any altruistic reasons. It’s just sheer pragmatism, with a heavy dose of gratefulness and respect thrown in. The kid has guts and determination, which are both traits that Adrian likes, and he saved Liz’s life. He saved Adrian’s life, too, even after Adrian tried to kill him. He could have just easily walked away and let the fire swallow Adrian whole, but the kid had carried him out of the wreckage anyway.

So Adrian doesn’t tell that one last secret, because there’s no point in getting the kid killed anymore. No point in revenge or cruelty when the kid is just a teenager trying to do the right thing, and Adrian’s already behind bars because of the choices he made.

When Gargan comes asking if he knows who the kid really is, Adrian knows that of all the ways for the kid to die, this is not the way he deserves. So he lies.

When Schultz comes asking if he wants vengeance, he shakes his head.

“I could get the brat,” Schultz says, quiet so that none of the guards can hear. He’s visiting under the guise of an old friend, with a fake name and ID cooked up by Mason. “If you give me his name, I’ll get him.”

Adrian appreciates the loyalty, he really does, but he turns him down. “It’s not worth it. You’ll just bring down the bigger guns on your head, and you don’t need that. Keep your head down, you and Mason both. Get out of the state. I’ll be okay.” 

Schultz doesn’t look happy about it, but he’s smarter than Brice ever was and he knows when to cut his losses. So he nods. “Take care of yourself, boss.”

Then he gets a visitor he didn’t expect at all.

“So, I heard quite a lot about you,” Tony Stark says from the other side of the glass. Adrian’s spent years seeing his face on paper and screens but he doesn’t quite look the way Adrian thought he would. He looks too human. “You’re the one who tried to rob my plane, and also robbed a bunch of stuff from the Department of Damage Control, I hear.”

“You’re the one who robbed me of my job,” Adrian says.

“I heard about that part, too,” Stark says. “Which doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been the origin story for a lot of supervillains lately.” 

“You reap what you sow,” Adrian deadpans.

“Which was kinda the point of the entire Department of Damage Control,” Stark says, waving a hand vaguely. “So I could clean up after my messes and nobody else would have to be responsible for them. Guess that didn’t work out so great, but then again, very few things I do work out the way I want them to. I’m just blessed that way.” 

Adrian crosses his arms and leans back in his seat. “Is there a point to this conversation?”

“Right, yes, I do. Reaping what I sow, I’m used to it, it’s a full-time job. I can deal.” Stark claps his hands together. “But nobody, _nobody_ should be reaping the products of my mistakes.” He looks down to tap his shiny watch a few times before looking back straight at Adrian. “Especially not a kid.”

Ah, so that’s why he’s here.

“I know that you know,” Stark says in quiet voice, leaning forward with his hands clasped atop his crossed knees. “And I’m here to remind you that it’s best if you’re the only one who knows.”

Adrian has no intention to sell the kid out, but he can’t resist the chance to see if Stark has any buttons that can be pushed, here. “What makes you think I’ll listen to you?”

Stark sits back against his seat. Says in a low voice, “Because he’s a kid who doesn’t deserve to pay for my mistakes.” His suit isn’t made of iron, but his voice is steel when he says, “And if you dare to take your grievances against me and take them out on him, if anybody from this prison knows his name, I’ll know. I’ll come for you. I’ll make sure you never see your family ever again. I’ll make sure you lose _everything_.”

Intimidation doesn’t work on Adrian, but the soft, sure way Stark gives his word, it’s not intimidation. It’s a promise that will be kept and delivered. 

“He’s really not my problem anymore,” Adrian says, indicating the prison around him. “I’ve got better things to worry about.”

Stark huffs, the cold steely glint in his eyes fading away, and he doesn’t bring up the kid again.

Later, in the dark, waiting for sleep to come, Adrian decides he’s not going to be the one to get the kid killed. Adrian’s been a father for seventeen years and he’s keenly aware of the monster he’d willingly become for his daughter. He isn’t interested in finding out what kind of monster Tony Stark can become if anything happens to the kid.

5.

May Parker is furious. She grounds Peter and tells him in no uncertain terms that the moment he tries to sneak out again will be the last time he ever gets to leave the apartment aside from going to school. She confiscates the suit. She calls up this Happy person through Peter’s half-broken phone and yells at this man she’s never met for twenty minutes. With Peter guiltily shut away in his room and his phone abandoned on the dining table, May grips the kitchen counter with white-knuckled hands and tells herself she’s shaking because she’s angry, that she’s furious about her fifteen-year-old baby nephew turning out to be some vigilante. She clings onto that fury.

Because if she stops being angry, she’s just going to be terrified, and she can’t. She can’t let herself be scared in front of Peter. She can’t be weak when she has to protect him.

Peter thinks he doesn’t need to be protected. He thinks he can go out there and save the world, but the world has guns and missiles and _aliens_. Peter’s just a boy.

She misses Ben, right now. She misses having someone to share the parenting with, a partner to play the good cop to her bad cop. Someone who could sit Peter down and tell him _we’re doing this because we love you_.

There’s a horrible lurching sensation in her gut, a tightening in her throat, and she curses herself when everything goes blurry with tears brimming in her eyes. She’s not going to cry. She’s not going to cry. Peter is only one thin wall away, _she is not going to cry_.

There’s a knock on the front door.

May wipes her eyes and makes her way towards the door, hands still trembling. When she looks into the peephole, there’s Tony Stark standing outside.

She contemplates leaving him out there, then considers just opening the door to yell at him, then decides it’s a bad idea to yell about his involvement in her nephew’s vigilantism where everybody else in the building can hear. So she opens the door and glares at him instead. “Get in.”

To his credit, he doesn’t try to charm her or act like he’s not aware of how much deep shit he’s in, and he simply complies, walking in straight towards the living room. Peter, who’s poked his head out of his room to see who’s here, squeaks. “Uh, Mr. Stark.”

“You go back in your room,” May says. Peter wilts under her tone and immediately retreats, closing the door quietly. She tries not to feel guilty about the kicked puppy look on his face. 

She turns back to Tony, who’s standing by the windows, hands shoved into his suit pockets, looking a lot like he’s trying to maintain his dignity in front of a firing squad. It’s a far cry from the suave man who’d rocked up to their apartment months ago, claiming that Peter won a scholarship. The memory stings. He’s lied to her since day one. 

He knew it was Peter under that mask from his shiny tower in Manhattan while May had been living with Peter, clueless.

“You knew,” she accuses, and she hates how her voice wobbles precariously. “You knew he was endangering himself and you didn’t tell me. You, you _enabled_ him.” She could slap him, but she’s not sure she can cross the room without her feet giving away underneath herself. “He could have gotten seriously hurt. He could have _died_.” Her voice cracks horribly on that last word, and she holds her breath, tries not to crumble apart then and there.

Tony shifts on his feet, eyes flickering from Peter’s door to May, and then he finally clears his throat and says, “I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Then why,” May starts, and stops. She’s not sure what to say.

“Because Peter’s a good kid,” Tony says. He sounds like he wishes this weren’t the case. “Even if I could stop him from putting on the suit, it’ll kill him just the same if he can’t go protect the little people. Because he’s Spiderman.” He takes a step towards May. “And nobody can take that away from him. Not the bad guys, not me. Not even you.” He takes another step, then another, until he’s an arm’s length away. He looks her in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

“Why would—“ 

May covers her mouth with one hand, trying to stifle a sob, tears spilling down her face before she can stop them. She clenches her eyes shut and tells herself she can’t break, not now.

“Peter can’t hear you,” Tony says quietly. May lifts her head to stare at him through her half-blurred vision. “He’s on the roof with one of the mini drones. I thought we could use some privacy.” He fiddles with his watch. “Sorry, I know he’s grounded, but I think you need this.” He hesitates, then lays a gentle hand on her arm. “It’s okay to be scared.”

May takes her hand off of her mouth to yell at him, but all that comes out is a broken sob. One sob leads to another, then she starts crying in earnest, furious by how comforted she is by the hand settling on her shoulder, awfully relieved that Peter isn’t in his room to hear her. She cries because there’s nothing she can do to stop her baby boy from going out there and risking himself, because she’d known he would eventually go out whether she grounded him or not, even before Tony just confirmed it.

She can’t protect Peter.

“What do I do,” she says. She lifts her head to look at Tony. She wants to blame him, but blaming him for this mess doesn’t fix anything. “How can I protect him when I’m just—a person? A normal person?” 

Tony, as uncomfortable as he looks, doesn’t move his hand away from where it’s on her shoulder. He squeezes her once in reassurance. “You say good morning to him. You make sure he’s eating his meals. You ask him about school and remind him that he's still just a kid who has an aunt that loves him.” He looks away. “Having someone to come back to makes a big difference.”

May sniffles. “And when he’s out there?”

“I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed,” Tony says. He sounds scared too, just a bit. Like he wants to trap Peter in a safety net that Peter thinks he doesn’t need. “I’m _trying_.”

It’s no promise, no guarantee that Peter will be safe, no excuse for the lies and enabling, but May believes him anyway. She can’t afford to do otherwise. She needs an ally, somebody to have Peter’s back, because she doesn’t want to do this by herself. Doesn’t want to wait alone in the dark of the night, wondering if nobody’s coming through that door.

“I’m still mad at you,” she says, wiping the last of the tears away.

Tony shrugs, patting her shoulder one last time before withdrawing his hand, drumming his thigh with his fingertips. One corner of his mouth quirks up. “I probably deserve it.”

Later, after Tony leaves and Peter cracks open his door to look at May’s red-rimmed eyes, she tells him that she loves him. That he can have the suit back, but only if he promises to try his damned best to come back for dinner every night. She knows it’s the most she can ask of him.

Peter hugs her and apologizes a hundred times, thanks her a thousand times. He promises not to be too reckless, promises to tell her everything, promises so many things that May wants to believe. She hugs him tight and hopes Tony Stark never stops trying.

0\. 

Peter says, “I was just trying to be like you.”

It hurts to hear these words, hurts to look at Peter’s shining eyes, hurts like a motherfucker to think of back when Tony used to say the same thing to Howard Stark. Tony is nobody’s role model, but somehow this kid, with his gangly limbs and motormouth and heart of gold, has decided Tony’s the one for him, and Tony is scared shitless. 

“I want you to be better,” Tony says, trying to crowd everything he doesn’t dare say aloud into those six words. _You can be better than me. Don’t make my mistakes. You’re already a better person than I will ever be, please don’t put me on a pedestal, you’ll be disappointed. I’m not the hero you think I am. I’m going to let you down. Don’t let me be the death of you. Please, don’t let me ruin you too_.

He tells Peter to give the suit back and watches Peter’s heart fracture before Tony’s very eyes. “But I’m nothing without the suit.”

“If you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it,” Tony says. 

Later, in his workshop, he runs through all the footage saved through the Baby Monitor Protocol and keeps tabs on every face worth of note in the recordings. He tracks them all down, one by one, and tries his fucking best to figure out what to do with Peter Parker.

Peter is a better person than Tony. He deserves better.

Tony needs to become better.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, god, Howard didn’t teach him anything about this shit, but fuck if Tony isn’t going to try. He needs to try, if only because Peter deserves someone to fight for him.

Tony Stark starts with a background check on the guy who directed Peter to the ferry in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> writing tumblr: [divineprojectzero](http://divineprojectzero.tumblr.com)  
> main tumblr: [listentotheshityousay](http://listentotheshityousay.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@listento_yousay](http://twitter.com/listento_yousay)


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